Why do computers get slower?

af_thefragile

Why do computers get slower the longer you have them?

Like I remember when I first got my laptop it was super fast. Would boot it under 30secs and would load up programmes almost instantly.

Now it takes over 2-3mins to boot up and everything takes forever to load...

I don't know if its just a windows thing because I also have a macbook which has become pretty much useless by this stage. Its slightly faster than the windows but it keeps getting hot and crashing every few minutes...

Anyway, are computers supposed to be disposable that you use them for a couple of years over which time they slow down and become sluggish when you eventually get sick and tired of them and buy a new one??

Cuddlesworth

How long is a piece of string?

There are many factors in why machines slow down. The hard-drive is the biggest culprit. It physically slows down with time plus the data it stores becomes more disjointed and harder to access at the same time. Then you have virus updates, OS updates, a multitude of application installs and other parts tacked onto your original install over the years.

Then there is hardware progression, older machines being unable to catch up to the current requirements. This is becoming more noticeable as more and more underspeced laptops are sold.

gozzers08

its painful alright, my laptop got so bad i backed it up to an external harddrive and wiped it - it has been a lot better now for the three months since i did it. However it is starting to slow down again. Unfortunately the multitude of reasons described above account for a lot of the reason, coupled with the fact that manufacturers have built in planned obsolescence - otherwise their market for computers would shrink too much, they want us to get frustrated and upgrade!
I would advise to wipe it once, its like a breath of fresh air again even for a while. Its still way better today than it was pre wipe, but beware wiping it means a lot of windows updates and usually a service pack install or two needed to get back up to date.

jme2010

A fresh install of windows and a clean-off of the dust inside should have it running like new again.

If the HDD has degraded, pop in a new one and you'll defo be back in business for under 50 squid. Or try upgrading ram for another boost in performance.

johndoe99

when PCs are saving data, some people are under the assumption it places it in a neat order on the hard disk, sadly that's far from the truth, its basically dumped here and there (they are connected by an index file for location) but because of this it slows the PC down.

You need a good defragmentation software to clean up the clutter, i use "PerfectDisk 11", there are numerous others (needs to be run at monthly intervals). This will keep the PC running at peak performance, just like the day you first purchased it.

danjo-xx

I run windows deframenter every month, and glary utilites and have no probs but I'm no expert.

Hal Emmerich

Try these to speed things up OP,

CCleaner (You can use this to control what programs boot at startup aswell.)
Defragler

If these don't work then a re-install is your best option before cheap upgrades or new machine.

Razzuh

The first answer you got was probably the best I think so far. It's very hard to say why a computer has slowed down.

A lot of people are saying that defragmenting will get you back to day 1: it won't. It'll help somewhat but not hugely if you run it regularly.

RAM is probably a major factor in why things get slower. 7-8 years ago a normal spec PC might have come with 128MB RAM. The latest version of any internet browser will take up 200 - 600MB of RAM very easily on its own. That's on top of windows and all the other applications you might have running...which brings me to the next point.

The more software you install the more likely it is your computer will get slower. Disabling some of these from starting automatically when you boot will help performance quite a bit, but it's not really for beginners. If you fancy a go, you can google for directions and try it. If there's any software you don't use any more, uninstall it.

Antivirus can be a major drag on resources (and so are viruses!). If you have Norton, McAffee etc. at the moment, try switching to microsoft security essentials, it doesn't use much resources and should keep you fairly protected.

As people have said already, formatting your hard drive and reinstalling only what you need will be like a breath of fresh air. It's a good option. Upgrading your RAM to at least 2GB is also a great option if you only have 1GB or less at the moment.

overshoot

you probably also have a lot of programs that turn on automatically when you boot up this happens once you install them, most of these you probably wouldnt use in a daily basis, almost all wont be needed at startup. go into startup config and turn a few off, it can make a big difference to boot up speed

Skerries

they get slower because the little computer people inside only have a short life span and slow down with age until they "crash"

freestyla

How long car would run without water, oil and air? Maintenance is the answer for every machine.

Here is few good answers already about cleaning up. It might seems like "scary" or "difficult" or "struggling" with cleaning tasks but every person using computer should learn to use at least Windows standard clean up tools to keep them up and running. Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter are there included to be used.

Do not buy new hardware until you are certain HW is broken. If you have clear error messages pointing at HW issues, search internet or post them here.
Look at Event Viewer (under Control Panel, Administrative tasks, Computer management etc) for red marked errors, or even yellow marked warnings. Usually they don't tell much to ordinary users but if they re red errors, you should search internet (e.g. www.eventid.net has many answers) or post them to forum.
Memory is cheap upgrade yes (2GB for 30eur) but you will feel boost for few days until it starts to be sluggish again because you are not maintaining Windows and hard drive.
SSD (solid state disk) is the best hardware upgrade one can buy to get rid of sluggish everyday tasks and to boost system startup time but it's still very expensive upgrade (120GB costs 180eur!).

This order I m doing maintenance tasks (remember to restart computer every while, between system and software changes):

1. Check Windows Task Manager while computer is running on idle --> PErformance and Processes tabs. What you see there? By clicking CPU and Memory columns you can arrange processes in asc/desc order to see what process is using the most memory or CPU. If you don't recognize a process by its weird name, Google.. might be malware!

2. If you suscpect malware took over your command center.. you should ask yourself (or other users, what web pages are you surfing? what crapy software are you installing?). Anyway.. there are many free tools for removing malware (e.g I m using Spybot for years no probs).

3. Remove unnecessary software (use Control Panel-->Add/Remove Programs in XP or Programs and Features in Win7). I bet you will find at least few you don't need. Google unknown ones.
3a. and be a bit more careful when installing software --> tick off all kind of ****e toolbars and offers that free software installation wizards are showing you and tick off automatic startup with Windows.

4. Remove temporary and recently used files from time to time --> Disk Cleanup.
CCleaner is very good app too for this purpose but do not clean up registry until you are at least 95% sure what you are doing or your computer will run worst.

5. Run Defragmenter (not for Solid State drives, only for Hard drives!). If your file fragmentation is 20% up, run Defrag two days in a row- after running it once, use computer for some time normally, restart it a couple of times meanwhile, then run Defrag again.
Defragler app is actually,more effective than Windows own Defrag but not much difference as long you are using either e.g. once every few weeks or so.

6. Disable browsers add-ons to speed up you surfing.

7. After completed above tasks, test you Windows experience now. Continue further if its still slooow.

8. If more than one user is using this machine, search for and delete index.dat files. Also delete unused Windows profiles in this case (System properties --> User profiles). Might require restart to enable Delete button here. Re-create old profiles.

9. Check how big is Virtual memory (or paging file)? it should the same amount as you RAM (physically installed memory) but not more than 3GB on 32-bit system. I wouldn't set it to more than 2 or 3GB anyway.

10. Check System Enviroment Variables --> scroll down to "Path" and make sure there is this line as the first one, without quotation marks: "%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;"

11. Turn off Indexing Service from C drive (or whaever drive letter where Operating system and Programs are installed on). Nobody really needs this function and its slowing down hard drive functionality a lot. The purpose of Indexing service is to find files fast on your computer but are you really using Windows search that often/don't you know where your files?

12. Check your hard drive for errors. C drive Properties --> Tools --> Error-checking.. tick both options on (Automatically fix file system errors and Bad sectors) restart computer and let it check itself for an hour or two.

13. Check TCP/IP and Internet properties .. there could be something messing your connection?

14. If you computer came with manufacturer Power Maintaning or Power Manager software, check it's not set to some super power saving mode hence preventing CPU and graphic card from working at full speed.

Right on.. I wrote few lines well good luck with speeding things up!

mach1982

Computers get slow for a number of reason .The more stuff you install the , the less room there for the virtual memory and over time a hard gets fragment , ie say you have a picture not all the data would be stores in sequence say it 225 byes in size the first 100 bytes maybe at the middle of the hard drive , and the rest at edge.

Antar Bolaeisk

The greatest offenders in system slow down are, as mentioned above, unnecessary programs. Check to see what's loading at startup and disable everything you don't need. If you don't know what it is, google it.

Go to start -> run -> msconfig -> startup

Untick everything in there that you don't use or need (this includes all sorts of helper programs and updater services which generally serve little to no purpose other than to take up processor cycles).

Next we'll move to services, this time go to start -> run -> services.msc

A lot of the services in here are microsoft's and generally required for the day to day running however some are completely unused by a lot of users. Have a look here for service configurations for the different Windows OSes. As for the services relating to your own hardware/software configuration some of them will come with helpful descriptions, a lot won't. Google them if you don't know what they are and set those you don't need to disable. (for example, do you really need those bluetooth and tablet services if you use neither?).

Make sure all your drivers are up to date.

Next up, how much RAM do you have installed on your computer? In this day and age where RAM is so cheap I would recommend you have at least 2GB installed and if you're running a 64-bit OS then you should have 4GB. Before rushing out and buying some though be careful to note what RAM your motherboard supports, there's a lot of variety out there and, at a casual glance, it all looks the same.

A faster/larger hard-drive can help a little as well but I wouldn't go out of my way to install one unless I specifically required the space.

What operating system are you running? If it's XP then you can use BootVis to see what's loading at boot (and hence what's taking up all the time) and if it's Vista/7 then you can use the Windows Performance Toolkit and run the xboot -trace boot -prepsystem command to optimise the boot sequence.

Hope that helps a bit

Dude111

I cant believe how many ppl DO NOT KNOW TO CLEAN TEMP FILES,COOKIES,ETC and end up having 100's of megs of un-needed crap!! (No wonder thier computers slow down )

loldog

af_thefragile wrote: »

Anyway, are computers supposed to be disposable that you use them for a couple of years over which time they slow down and become sluggish when you eventually get sick and tired of them and buy a new one??

That's kind of what happens in practice. Some people with older PCs and laptops put a lightweight Linux OS on them. I have an oldish Dell D600 which runs quite nicely on Debian Linux, for browsing, Youtube, emails etc.

.

Naikon

Fragmentation of NTFS file systems, generally. If you maintain the system well, it won't be that big a deal. The registry is also a major culprit. Give Ubuntu a whirl and notice how it does not slow down over time.

pickarooney

I'd say the vast majority of problems are software/OS/file system related. I'm actualyl surprised a MacBook on OS X would slow down significantly, although overheating/crashing sounds like more of a hardware issue than what your PC is suffering from.

My Ubuntu machine never slowed down at all over the 5 years I had it before the motherboard tanked. It actually speeded up a bit when upgrading to newer OS releases.

Dude111

Naikon wrote:

The registry is also a major culprit. Give Ubuntu a whirl and notice how it does not slow down over time.

Indeed,keeping the reg clean IS A GOOD THING!

Antar Bolaeisk

Dude111 wrote: »

Indeed,keeping the reg clean IS A GOOD THING!

In my experience registry cleaners are nothing more than snake oil and provide zero benefit to the day to day running of the computer. I have yet to see one give a noticeable improvement to the system.

Cuddlesworth

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

In my experience registry cleaners are nothing more than snake oil and provide zero benefit to the day to day running of the computer. I have yet to see one give a noticeable improvement to the system.

They are. Since the days of FAT32 drives defragmentation is also negligible in any real performance benefit. And cleaning mb's of temp files is also pointless since they don't impact on the system in any way.

With Windows Seven and Vista the performance monitor tool is a great indicator of what physcial part of the system is no longer meeting the demands of the system and to identify why. MAC's have similar tools since Tiger.

Unfortunately the mental benefit from various clean up programs and reg tools seem stronger then the actual benefit of finding and fixing whats wrong or accepting that a format is whats needed.

Naikon

The problem I have with the registry, is that it is a binary database. Once you corrupt even a single byte of the registry, you are looking at potential problems. It's a gaping single point of failure. Not good. Config files stored in /etc is yer only man. Never use registry cleaners on my windows machine. Pointless. Bring back .INI files, I say.

Dude111

Antar Bolaeisk wrote:

In my experience registry cleaners are nothing more than snake oil and provide zero benefit to the day to day running of the computer. I have yet to see one give a noticeable improvement to the system.

Hmmmmmm

Well do you agree that keeping your dresser drawers MESSY with un-needed things doesnt make it harder for you to find something quicker that your looking for in there?

Antar Bolaeisk

The registry is loaded into RAM at startup resulting in near instantaneous access, no matter how messy your dresser drawer is.

If you want to clean something clean out your prefetch folder, if you do this on an annual basis it should provide a bit of a boost and a measurable boost at that.

Capt'n Midnight

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

The registry is loaded into RAM at startup resulting in near instantaneous access, no matter how messy your dresser drawer is.

Doesn't the full reg have to be searched everytime an app is loaded, lots of apps don't clean up after themselves when they uninstall so you end up with a bloated reg which permenantly slows the system down



also HDD's slow down as the drive remaps failed sectors to the spare ones at the end of the drive - I'd rather the OS could mark them as bad - loosing 1% of a 500GB drive is better IMHO than have the head do a full seek back and forth , which also adds wear and tear on the drive.

Cuddlesworth

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Doesn't the full reg have to be searched everytime an app is loaded, lots of apps don't clean up after themselves when they uninstall so you end up with a bloated reg which permenantly slows the system down

Not the whole registry, only a part of it. And you can install hundreds of apps and add maybe 5% to its size. Wouldn't even make 1ms of a difference.

Kinetic^

Software becoming more demanding and hard drive wear and tear are also factors for computer slow downs.

Capt'n Midnight

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Not the whole registry, only a part of it. And you can install hundreds of apps and add maybe 5% to its size. Wouldn't even make 1ms of a difference.

I was thinking of stuff like openview and other junk that might also push the reg over 32MB , which is fun for those still on XP which swaps stuff out of memory (if you have more than 1GB then you might as well turn off an XP swap file to prevent it swapping stuff out)

IIRC they have to go through the whole reg the first time to find that part

anyway pagedfrg from sysinternals microsoft is another way to speed up the registry if it's been fragmented




Also suspend / hibernation is faster than booting

jme2010

freestyla wrote: »

your command center..

Arrgh......the F'ers stole that from me. Thats what I call my machine :pac: